Thoughts, news and infographic about Social media, Web2.0, Enterprise2.0, and more :-)

Menu

Twitter’s Innovation in Assembly

Being as one of the ten most visited websites on the internet, Twitter has rapidly gained its global popularity soon after it was launched in July 2006. The success of Twitter has been widely studied and discussed about how it aligns with web2.0 principles. One thing to look at is how Twitter effectively turns its website into a platform, and fosters the innovation and evolution through the power of network and community.

The web2.0 principle, “innovation in assembly” is described by Tim O’Reilly as

When commodity components are abundant, you can create value simply by assembling them in novel or effective ways.

Let’s see how Twitter utilizes a set of great practices to fully elaborate this principle:

Twitter offers API to its platform:

Twitter’s growth can be attributed to Twitter API which not only allows the service to be further expanded to mobile platform, but also encourages external programmers to build an API upon it and create additional value to it. (Examples of APIs built on Twitter API: Klout API and Topsy.

For better development: Data remixability and support multiple standards

Twitter introduced a new rule in August 2012, which makes the per-endpoint rate limits more restrictive and ensures that all API requests must be authenticated. Data remixability can be realized when data is uniquely addressable and supports multiple formats and delivery mechanisms (Twitter API supports XML, JSON, and the RSS and Atom syndication formats.)

Great API practices for the developer community:

Twitter successfully created a well-structured developer support infrastructure which fosters an active community for programmers to exchange ideas and collaborate more efficiently. Full documentation, sample code in multiple development languages are provided within the infrastructure as well.

Build your business model into you API

Twitter’s API focuses on how to make the service available to users through different platform and access ways. Its core Twitter API even made the service reach users through mobile platform before the production of Twitter mobile app.

Use Web 2.0 to support your platform

Twitter applied Web 2.0 practices such as “reward users first” by minimizing the barriers of adoption and fully “utilizing network effects” to build a vibrant ecosystem.

Twitter regards this action as “a reflection of where our TweetDeck power-users are going.” And in the future, all new capabilities will be introduced on this web-based application first, then Mac and PC apps.

Thanks for your comment!
The introduction of authentification can effectively clear out the blind spots in Twitter’s ecosystem by ensuring every request is addressable and recordable. The main reason that Twitter did it is simply that through the combination with access rate limit, it helps Twitter to get involved in the successful projects which leverage Twitter’s data.